C4, Collateral Damage, and a Very Bad Day
by T'Reilani
Summary: So what exactly does it take to get Prowl, of all 'bots, to start swearing? Less than you might think. Technorganic-verse, sometime before AOE. Rating is for Cybertronian language.


**A/N: This is entirely Tatyana Witwicky's fault. She gave me the idea and I ran with it. Title is the first thing that popped into my head in bio class. And yes, I know I have other stories to update...I promise I have a few updates in the works. Just needed to get this written while I had the idea.**

Prowl opened the door to the hangar and froze, staring at the chaos in what was normally a semi-restricted zone.

Humans. Everywhere.

Scorch marks, indicating multiple explosions. Also everywhere.

Half a dozen Autobots - thankfully, not including Sideswipe or Sunstreaker for once - scattered around the room, laughing hysterically.

The laughter died out as soon as Barricade looked up and saw the tactician in the doorway.

Prowl stared back silently for a long moment, trying to control the irritation threatening to spill over. It wasn't entirely their fault he had already had a very long day, of course, but did - whatever this was - really have to happen on the same day he had two-hour meetings with both Galloway and Simmons? The same day five different Autobots had showed up in his office with easily solved problems that did not need to be brought to his attention? Barely two days after dealing with an undercover Decepticon crisis on the other side of the planet? _Really_?

Of course. Of _course_ it did.

"Barricade..." He tried to keep his tone calm, addressing the only one in the room who seemed aware that Prowl was upset. "What is going on here?"

"Uh, well..." Barricade shrugged and looked back at the Chevy twins, currently cackling to themselves over a joke no one else was in on. "The glitch-brains found C4, and it kinda just grew from there." He pointed at Tai, who had smudges of soot on her face and a happy grin. "Look, the kid's happy, right?"

"...C4?" Prowl's optics narrowed as he took in the amount of damage to the hangar floor and walls. "How much did you use?" When no one answered, he turned back to Barricade and repeated himself sternly. "How much C4?"

Barricade shrugged, looking around uncomfortably under Prowl's increasingly icy glare. "Not sure actually? A lot."

"A lot." Prowl raised an eyebrow ridge. "That is extremely imprecise."

Tai looked up at him with a shrug. "Um...all of it, maybe?"

"All of it?" Prowl resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands, crossing his arms and glaring at everyone within range. "_All _of the C4."

"Well, not all of it exactly..." Tai ducked back behind Barricade's leg. "C'mon, Prowl, we didn't actually break anything..."

Prowl groaned, already calculating the amount of reports he was going to need to file on this. "Out. Now."

"But - "

"_NOW_." The tactician just barely managed to avoid yelling, but there was nothing he could do about the fact that his accent grated heavier in the back of his vocalizer. "All of you. Out."

The room cleared in record time, with two exceptions.

"Skids! Mudflap!" Prowl spun around to glare at them, noting but not really paying attention to the crate between them. "Did you hear - "

Of course the explosion was placed right at the weakest structural point. And of_ course_ that wall was already weakened by previous explosions. Which meant that it, along with the main ceiling strut and other three walls it supported, was going to come down.

And _of course _Prowl just happened to be standing in the perfect spot for said ceiling strut to slam down on his shoulder fins and send him sprawling under a pile of wooden debris.

By the time he'd managed to struggle free, with help from a worried Riella, he honestly wasn't sure if the Chevy twins had survived. Or if, at this point, he would be terribly upset if they hadn't.

They had. With remarkably few injuries.

_Good._

Prowl pulled away from Riella and crossed the space toward the Chevy twins in two steps, glaring at the duo with narrowed icy optics. "What. The. Frag. Were. You. Thinking?"

"Oh, Primus, here it comes," Sideswipe muttered from somewhere behind Tai and Barricade. "Heard that tone before. Clear the decks. Someone's gonna get an audioful."

Prowl ignored him, attention focused entirely on Skids and Mudflap. "You have exactly one sentence to give me a reason not to confine both of you to the brig for the next two months. Think very carefully before you speak."

Skids and Mudflap exchanged nervous glances, backing away almost as one. It was a long minute of utter silence before Skids finally answered. "There's...another thing of C4, an' we promise not to blow it up if ya don't send us to th' brig?"

Prowl's optics flashed an oddly dark shade of blue, and cables in his upper arm tightened to their limit as he reminded himself, over and over, that he could not intentionally punch a subordinate, no matter how much he might want to. "You had one sentence, and you're going with _blackmail_?"

"Uh, kinda depends." Skids was all but hiding behind his brother. "Is it gonna work?"

In his later report on the incident, Prowl would note that this was the point where he officially snapped.

"Frag no!" His accent roughened, as always when he was upset. That would have been less of a problem if it didn't end up making him sound rather like a Decepticon. "_Frag no_! What the Primus-damned, glitch-headed, slagging pit-spawned - " At that point, he ran out of English equivalents, and resorted to Cybertronian.

Barricade's optics grew wider and wider with every increasingly harsh-sounding consonant string, until Tai looked up at him in concern. "Yo, 'Cade, what's wrong? What'd he say?"

"Uh..." Barricade shrugged. "There's not exactly a translation, but..._wow._ I had no idea you could combine those two phrases. Seriously. I grew up in the fragging Kaon pits, and I'm learning new words from this."

"Praxus has a street culture all its own," Riella said dryly, eyeing her mate to make sure he didn't actually take a swing at the twins (who were now trying to hide behind each other). "You knew where he was from. Are you genuinely shocked?"

Prowl's rant finally ended, leaving Skids and Mudflap staring in wide-eyed shock at him. There was another long moment of awkward silence before Tai said quietly, "Wow."

Barricade broke the continuing silence with a series of slow claps, which died away the second Prowl spun to glare at him. The larger 'bot's uncomfortable laugh died away under Prowl's glare. "What? It was a joke?"

"Joke? I'll give you a fragging joke!" Prowl switched back to Cybertronian, tone dropping into a snarl that sounded distinctly threatening, and stormed off in the direction of his office. Behind Prowl's back, Jazz was attempting to stifle snickers, and failing.

Riella raised an eyebrow, glancing at the still-stunned Twins. "You heard him. As far as I'm aware, he was entirely serious about his plans for the remaining explosives if this incident is ever repeated." With that, she followed Prowl toward the building, leaving the twins to stare at each other with terrified expressions.

**Quick note: The mention of Prowl sounding 'Decepticon' is headcanon. I decided that I needed to justify Cybertronians using speech patterns that correspond to specific human ones (*cough*Jazz*cough*) as them having different dialects of Cybertronian. The distinct Decepticon sound is from the Kaon area. There's really no reason for a Praxian accent to sound Decepticon, but I thought it would be funny, so I decided that for the purposes of the movieverse, Praxus is close to Kaon and Prowl sounds extremely intimidating when he speaks Cybertronian. **


End file.
